The Sonos BlogThe Sonos Wireless HiFi System delivers all the music on earth, in every room, with deep, richly textured sound.2015-03-03T14:00:08Zhttp://blog.sonos.com/feed/atom/WordPressSonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20902015-03-03T00:42:12Z2015-03-03T14:00:08ZMoving music around your home just got easier and faster through the Sonos app for phones and tablets.

Following beta testing over the last several weeks, Sonos 5.3 is now available for all supported iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. The update introduces some new things for your Sonos and fixes others that we did not get right with the release of the Sonos app last spring. You’ll enjoy simpler room control, an improved design for the tablet app, and a quicker way to move back and forth between screens.

Here are a few tips to get acquainted with what’s new:

Three taps to party mode. Put the finishing touches on your party prep with a playlist to set the mood throughout the house. Use the new drop-down at the top center of our app to easily group or ungroup rooms in just a few taps.

Retrace your steps. Change your mind on what you want to play? Swipe down to instantly go from Now Playing to browsing. To go back one step further to the menu, swipe right from the far left to view all of your music sources.

Distractions welcome. If you want to go back to listen to a part you missed, the track progression bar is now more prominently displayed in your Now Playing screen, just below the album art. Drag it to whatever point in the song you want to play.

Start using Sonos 5.3 today by selecting ‘update now’ at the top of the home menu in your Sonos app.

]]>11Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20862015-02-26T16:44:44Z2015-02-26T14:00:36ZCalling all jazz lovers: Next Thursday you will be able to place an order on Sonos.com for our first limited edition speaker.

The Blue Note PLAY:1 features a custom design and music experience inspired by more than 75 years of the finest in jazz and an iconic record label that continues to inspire modern music.

If you are among the few thousand to get your hands on the Blue Note PLAY:1, you can enjoy an exclusive Blue Note channel built into your Sonos app with curated music from the greats including favorites from Don Was.

Depending on where you are in the world, check pricing and the official on-sale times. Get yours while supplies last for $250 USD, $280 CAD, €250, and £220 starting Thursday, March 5 at:

North America (US + Canada only): 10am PST / 1pm EST

Europe: 10am CET / 9am GMT

And just like all orders on Sonos.com, enjoy free shipping.

Only about 2,000 were made for each of the two continents and we expect them to sell quickly. There is a limit of two per household.

]]>13Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20732015-02-04T14:04:42Z2015-02-04T14:00:51ZOur first ever limited edition speaker celebrates more than 75 years of the finest in jazz with a custom design and access to exclusive playlists.

Legendary music deserves to be celebrated. Today, we pay tribute to the jazz legends, their art, and a record label founded on creating a timeless experience with music that captures the energy and emotion of a live performance. To commemorate 75 years and counting of Blue Note Records and a memorable year of collaborations together, we unveil the Sonos PLAY:1 Blue Note Limited Edition.

“Music is meant to convey an emotional message to the listener. You don’t want anything interfering with that message and Sonos shares Blue Note’s dedication to this,” said Blue Note President, Don Was. “Fidelity is true. Give me the truth.”

Available for purchase on Sonos.com in the coming weeks, the Blue Note PLAY:1 puts jazz artists on stage in your home and illustrates our shared dedication to high fidelity.

“We wanted to create an expression of Blue Note’s singular style while embracing all the idiosyncrasies of a live performance,” said Sonos VP of Design Tad Toulis. “This mindset led us to the design solution – one which captures a singular moment in the act of creation.”

Crafted with a custom color developed through hand-painting techniques and strategic use of robots, the speaker’s finish features a vertical fade from dark navy to cerulean blue, reflecting the deep bass to the richly detailed highs and lows that people know and love about the PLAY:1.

The paint line for the grills uses no fewer than seven gravity-fed atomizing spray nozzles to correctly apply the various shades of blue to the perforated metal surface.

The Blue Note PLAY:1 comes with the Blue Note on Sonos radio station built into the main menu in the Sonos app, powered by TuneIn. Enjoy a year of Blue Note programming with three curated channels within the station:

Artist Selects: Available exclusively on the Blue Note PLAY:1, listen vinyl-style to handpicked selections from the greats like Robert Glasper, Jose James, Terence Blanchard, Ambrose Akinmusire, Lionel Loueke, and Don Was himself, who has curated 125 of his personal favorites.

Born in Blue: We bring together legendary Blue Note artists and those who have sampled them for mixes that celebrate the intersection of modern music and legendary jazz.

Blue Note 101: Starting with the inception of Blue Note and following its progression to becoming an iconic label, listen and learn about jazz and its evolution over more than 75 years.

You can enjoy the Born in Blue and Blue Note 101 channels on your Sonos at home today and also on your other devices via TuneIn.

The Blue Note PLAY:1 will be sold exclusively on Sonos.com for $250 USD, $280 CAD, €250, and £220, while quantities last. Timing for when you’ll be able to purchase this collector’s speaker will be released in the coming weeks. We only made about 4,100 and expect them to sell quickly.

]]>12Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20702015-01-27T17:25:16Z2015-01-27T14:00:49ZSonos software update 5.3 brings simpler room control and faster access to all your music in the Sonos app for smartphones and tablets. Android users can try it in beta today.

When we launched our new Sonos app last spring, we applied everything we learned from our first ten years to bring you a flexible platform built to take you through all the great things to come in streaming.

While we’ve received a lot of positive feedback for new features like the ability to search across all of your music sources in one place, we also heard from many of you that we made some things worse. It became more difficult to move music between rooms, the Sonos app for tablets did not make good use of the screen size, and some of the smaller features you loved in the previous app were not available (e.g. the track progression bar).

Today we’re introducing our next update, which is intended to make things better. Here are some of the main improvements:

A faster way to manage all the rooms in your home: Effortlessly move your music around your home with a more accessible rooms menu, now available by tapping the top of any screen in the Sonos app.

Improvements to the tablet app: New dedicated screens for what’s playing and music discovery on iOS and Android tablets makes toggling between screens more intuitive.

Quickly switch between screens: Using your phone, swipe down from the now playing screen to go back to browse your music. Then swipe from left to right to show all your music sources.

Want to hear that verse again? The track progression bar is back in your now playing screen, just below the album art. Drag it to whatever point in the song you want to play.

Easier to mix it up: With Crossfade, blending your tracks is simple from within the info menu, now more prominently placed alongside the sleep timer. From the now playing screen, press the info button to access.

We hope you like where these changes are headed. It is our ultimate goal to bring you the best experience with music at home and you can expect that we’ll continue to push toward that with everything we do.

Try what’s new by downloading Sonos 5.3 in beta today on any Android mobile device. The full release, including the updated app for iOS devices, will be available in the coming months.

]]>36Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20632015-01-15T19:04:22Z2015-01-15T16:58:27ZEverything we do at Sonos is grounded in one thing – to create the ultimate experience with music in your home. Occasionally we fall short and you deserve an explanation.

We have conducted a thorough investigation to ensure we improve in the future. Here is what we’ve found:

December 25: This outage was due to an unprecedented number of connections coming into the Sonos servers that manage our Spotify interface. Although we tripled our capacity prior to the holiday period, we failed to adequately simulate the increased load in our testing. We are developing improved load-testing to avoid this in the future.

December 26: As we worked on addressing the December 25 outage, we inadvertently removed a critical filter that manages the caching mechanism for the Spotify music service. We are developing improved tools to simplify and automate configuration changes to prevent this in the future

December 27: Sonos identified playback and browse failure when using Spotify playlists on Sonos. We removed servers that had a small subset of customers stuck in this state and are continuing to investigate other possible causes.

December 31: Spotify experienced an increased load on their Search servers and our system design wasn’t able to absorb the peak usage without causing delays to our customers. We’ve updated that code to address the issue going forward.

Spotify is a great partner and one of the most loved services on Sonos. We fully believe your music should never stop playing and you should always be able to count on us both for that.

Thank you,

Andrew Schulert, VP of Quality

]]>24Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20602014-12-29T13:59:14Z2014-12-28T20:35:33ZWe sincerely apologize for causing some of you to miss out on enjoying your Spotify music on Sonos over the holidays. It was our mistake.

Our team has been working around the clock and while we are confident we’ve fixed the problems, we are continuing to investigate all potential causes. We will share more once we reach a conclusion. If you experience any issues, please contact our support team by visiting: http://www.sonos.com/support.

]]>22Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20572014-12-21T20:19:42Z2014-12-21T20:19:42ZWe hung out with Sean Foreman, songwriter, musician, and one half of the electronic duo 3OH!3 at his house in Echo Park. Having moved to LA three years ago, Sean and his wife Melanie are part of a tight-knit community that surrounds them. Watch the film and read Sean’s thoughts below on how he and Melanie have created a home that encourages and inspires creativity.

“We were lucky to collaborate with some incredible people starting out. Katy Perry, Lil Jon – we worked with Andrew WK on a song – people I looked up to before even venturing into this world. Now it’s even more diversified – we live literally a block away some of the dudes from the band Fun. Sia is right up the street from me and she’s just such a profound songwriter. Sort of like this really cool neighborhood that I can stumble down to the coffee shop and run into a billion people I can collaborate with.”

“I start my day anxious every day until I either write a song or do something creative. I have a need to keep creating, it keeps me sane. As soon as I’ve started making something, I’m completely content.”

“A living space and a homeostasis of a home is so vital to me, or to any creative artist. It’s a place where you feel safe to do whatever you want, creatively, musically. My older brother asked me “why were you listening to N’sync’s greatest hits the other night?” I was like, “How did you know that?” And he said, “You need to not make your Spotify playlist public.” But that’s the funny thing about what I do in my house. I listen to such a vast spectrum of stuff and discover so much new music just in the confines of my house. I have this process – especially with Sonos – where I put on new music and get so many ideas – and I turn that off and go straight into the studio and immediately create. This BPM and this kind of feel, or ska or reggaeton. That’s the alchemy and the process. And that’s primarily the house – between me and my wife Melanie we build and decorate it – it’s an inspirational place. I’ve got guitars and basses and a piano just to grab and play at any moment.”

“That was key for me, getting that place that I could call home, where I could sit and create and have friends come over and collaborate and have artists come through and those things are so important for me and my work. I’ve come from a family where we would always entertain. Like my family get togethers consisted of drinking a shitload of whiskey and playing music and that’s still kind of what I have at my house here. We have people over, have an atmosphere that’s really fun and we’re able to create new stuff.”

]]>0Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20512014-12-16T20:55:58Z2014-12-15T16:30:13ZDoes the line “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” strike joy or dread when you hear it each year? Either way, it means more time spent entertaining your friends and family. Last week, with the release of Sonos 5.2, we shared a few ways that Sonos can transform your holiday season and make time spent with loved ones even more enjoyable with music.

Sometimes it is overwhelming to be the DJ of the party, especially with so many choices to set the mood. To help, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Spotify, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Songza, Deezer and Pandora to develop a quick and easy way to elevate the holidays with the perfect playlist. Whether you’re throwing an ugly sweater party for friends or hanging mistletoe for a holiday cocktail party, we have the ultimate playlist for every holiday occasion.

]]>1Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20462014-12-04T14:24:39Z2014-12-04T14:00:35ZEvery holiday moment in your home has its perfect music match. Whether you’re hosting or a guest at another’s home, our newest features (now available with the Sonos 5.2 software) make it easier than ever to transform your holiday parties and family traditions with music. Try them today along with some of our favorite tips and tricks to make every occasion one to remember.

For the host:

Curate the mood by adding tracks to the Sonos queue. If playlist building is not your thing, check out Hipster Holidays and Holiday Party Favorites on TuneIn from within your Sonos Controller App.

Expand your world of music with new services including Deezer Elite in the U.S. and SoundCloud globally. Select “Add Music Services” to explore from more than 50 partners worldwide.

Have a house full of Spotify or Pandora accounts? Add them all. We now offer multi-account support across services, so everyone in the family can pull from their favorite tracks, albums, and preferences within their individual subscriptions.

Before the credits roll on that holiday classic, switch over to the film’s soundtrack. Remember the PLAYBAR leads a double life – amazing sound for your music and for your TV. Plus, the PLAYBAR just got even better today through software with enhanced sound for your music.

If your phone isn’t nearby and the playlist took a wrong turn, never fear. Quickly save the party with a double tap of the Play/Pause button (formerly mute) on any Sonos speaker to move on to the next song.

For the guest:

As soon as you walk in the host’s door, download the Sonos Controller App on your iOS or Android device and connect to the WiFi network to join in.

BYOM – Bring Your Own Music. Your personal playlists and music preferences don’t have to stay behind. With today’s release, multi-account support allows you to add up to 32 different streaming accounts to the system. Simply select “Add Music Services” from your host’s home menu to get started.

The tracks stored on your mobile device are also fair game. Search across all your music sources in one place.

For the kid’s table:

Include some music-infused games in the night’s agenda. Freeze dance is sure to get the kids moving (and adults, too). While the music is playing, press the pause icon on your Sonos controller. The last person to freeze in place loses. Repeat until there is one dancer left. Reward accordingly.

For the early-to-sleep: set your Sonos speakers in the bedroom or nursery to “White Noise for Deep Sleep” on Spotify to tune out the celebration on the other side of the door.

With new features and services coming to you through software updates, there’s always more to discover with your Sonos. Update your system to Sonos 5.2 today. For more information, visit: http://www.sonos.com/software/release/5-2

]]>47Sonos Staffhttp://blog.sonos.com/?p=20422014-12-01T19:12:41Z2014-12-01T18:40:51ZHow many things can you really accomplish before a single song finishes? Watch this couple set up multiple Sonos speakers throughout the home while Kimbra performs her track “Carolina” in the living room.

After an initial beat captures Kimbra’s imagination, the music lovers go from unboxing to setting up Sonos in four rooms. By the end of the song, they’re streaming Kimbra’s music from Spotify throughout the house.

Having a quick and intuitive setup experience also means that everyone you recommend Sonos to will be able to listen in a snap.

Once you add your first speaker by plugging it in for power and connecting to the home WiFi in the Sonos Controller app, you can add others at the touch of a button. Just select Add a Player in the app. From there, start streaming your music in high fidelity within seconds from your favorite sources.

Want to hear more from Kimbra? Dive into the short behind the scenes video to hear about her process and affection for music.